Sublime

The limited remit and strength of international governance create severe bounds on the ability to provide transnational public goods through voting and deliberation, but the almighty dollar (and yuan) is respected in most corners of the planet. Capital flows and the technology it is invested in shape lives around the world.

When both conservatives and progressives resist the temptation of radical revolution, and stay loyal to democratic traditions and institutions, democracies prove themselves to be highly agile. Their self-correcting mechanisms enable them to ride the technological and economic waves better than more rigid regimes. Thus, those democracies that

a flood of new digital communication platforms inundating free societies with instantaneous information and nonstop networked dialogue.

The larger outcome is that democracy works better because the bandwidth of communication between voters and politicians increases enormously. In these days of high-speed Internet, the amount of information your elected representatives get from you is still decidedly nineteenth century: a hundred bits or so every two years, as much as fits on a